The Physics of Dominos
by shira syndrome
Summary: Tumbling boulders are a lot like the act of self destruction, don't you think? Everyone seemed to know that when I finally reached the bottom of my mountain, I was going to bring them all down with me. [Sasuke centric]


Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi, not me. I can think we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

a/n: I'll apologize in advance. I'm not a Sasuke girl; in fact, I don't even feel ambivalence towards him, but more of a OH GOD JUST DIE ALREADY dislike. Originally, it was just to covertly bash Sasuke when he finally returns to Konoha, and finds that Naruto is drooling over another guy. And yet in the end I wrote over twelve thousand words of Sasuke-centric fanfiction. What the hell's up with that, huh?

I tried not to consciously bastardize anything, but the numerous elements I thought up were sort of mashed together in the final draft, and created this unbetaed travesty (although big and bountiful thanks to Alley for letting me whine my fool head off to her for god knows how long). I'm sorry I put a dent in your fandom, Sasuke fans.

Oh. And there's italics. Lots and lots of italics. Enough that I should be shot. XP

* * *

**The Physics of Dominos**

* * *

_Every country has its fairytales and Fire is no exception. There is an old story on behalf of a long-dead feudal son, a time-worn fable retold by countless tongues to countless more generations, about a prince and his journeys._

_And, as all stories do, it starts with once upon a time._

* * *

Sasuke is a slow-motion exploding tag, a fuse winding down to time zero, wrapped up in pretty pale skin and the glowing aftermath of his clan's glory. Like his _Katon Goukakyuu no Jutsu_, he is the firestorm that will eventually suck up so much oxygen he will burn himself and the little house called Konoha to the ground. And where his dear elder brother failed, he... _he_ will more than likely succeed.

Tsunade knows this, and like all predictable natural disasters that can be avoided with a few well-placed variables, she has sat up late nights with Shizune at her elbow, making preparations for the beloved Uchiha heir's return. As much as shinobi witness the ebbs and flows of Konoha and beyond, as much as he is Orochimaru's precious pet that single-handedly killed twenty one percent of their forces in the first six months of the war alone, in the eyes of the elders and aristocrats and fools who supposedly learned their lesson by his master's previous betrayal, he is still their little boy, one of Konoha's treasures. So he will come home and they will welcome him with open arms, no matter how he makes them bleed lifebood like the deep gouge of a knife. Because he is theirs. 

(_Their triumph, their awful miscalculation. What difference is there?_)

And come home he does.

On this day - a cold, grey morning dotted with rain-fattened clouds, silver-edged and sharp - Tsunade watches the proceedings in the streets from the Hokage tower; a stretcher circled by bobbing animal masks, the body wrapped in white, and the people who ignore the warnings to go back inside and instead point at the venomous snake sleeping so sweetly. From this height, he merely looks like a whip-thin boy. The Kazekage hovers at her desk, a sand-dark smudge against the bright interior of her office, signing documents with a palpable gravity that threatens to choke the life out of the room. That's right. They've all learned their lesson the hard way, haven't they? And Tsunade knows full well that there are just some people (_inhuman things, soulless things, humans that can't really be humans for all the morality they show) _who can do nothing else but corrupt everything they touch, walking miasmas.

Found squatting in Wind country, equal parts half-mad and half-dead from a curse seal finally pushed to its very limits (_and Kabuto's corpse left in the mountain ranges and Orochimaru in hiding, his dream container cast out like spoiled fishing bait_) the Kazekage was the one to finally subdue him. Although his whereabouts were only made known after he had killed hapless border guards and one Wind official in his wild frenzy. 

Disasters spawn more disasters, thus the physics of dominos, is that not right? If not for goodwill brought on by personal dealings between members of their countries, tensions between their villages might have threatened the war alliance. 

Custody and reparations were dealt with with a blunted sort of relief. After all, accepting full responsibility was only natural. Uchiha Sasuke is their little golden boy, their lonely porcelain doll tragedy. However, the Kazekage has agreed to her request and the flick of the pen is proof enough. True colors, as they say, are hard to deny. If in one year (_if she has gambled correctly, and oh god, let her be right this time_) the saying stays true, a part of this on-going nightmare may finally come to an end.

Seven years, five months, twenty one days. There is nothing more to do to save him except douse his fire to stop the spreading flame.

* * *

_This prince lived in a palace more grand than any structure in the world, centered in a kingdom more prosperous than any kingdom before it, which existed in a land too bountiful to be imagined. And the sun shone down on it all, and so they called it the country of golden fire._

_He was soon to be promised to this kingdom - _his_ kingdom - as the sole child born of the king, and all the people loved him dearly, for he was handsome and powerful, and it was said he could charm hot blood from a cold stone. He had good friends, loyal and true, and many admirers who sent him roses every day. His cousin, not quite so handsome or charming as he, followed him round the palace, carrying his boots and books, taking care of his royal duties when he was away. There was nothing he could not have, could not achieve._

_He lived a blessed life._

* * *

Sasuke woke to the scent of his own rotting flesh, underlying starch and antiseptics. 

First thought: Those eyes, those damned demon eyes, just like back then, staring at him through folds of sand, and he couldn't see anything through his out of control Sharigan and the blood pooling in his eyes - 

Then, his second thought: All his tenketsu had been hit. 

There was the unmistakable buzz of foreign chakra all around him. _Fuck_. He grit his teeth; he had fought too hard, too long to die yet, not yet.

He automatically flexed a hand without opening his eyes, trying to jumpstart his chakra circulation. His fingers felt numb, his feet and toes... no, his whole body, cold, flaking skin stretched tight across him like a shroud. He didn't need to be fully awake to know his system was as stiff and curdled as a corpse's, and that thought was enough to send his heart into a rapid _thump-thump-thump_ seizure against his ribs. He pushed harder, narrowed down onto that ink black powerhouse tattooed into his skin, anticipating the false warmth of chakra. 

Nothing.

Harder, then. His torn muscles sent jolting red screams straight to his brain as he tensed, dancing behind his scrunched eyelids. Still nothing. (_And like an addict there was nothing but sudden panic._)

When he finally opened his burning, itching eyes he registered the white bandages, white bed, white walls, and the single white light poised above his head all at once. After that, the IV attached to his arm, and most importantly, the debilitating weakness in his circulatory system (_the worst fear of his eight-year-old mind since watching Itachi's receding silhouette, to be helpless, powerless, _weak). An infirmary, then.

Sasuke squinted, trying to focus against the brightness. He lasted three hours against the head-spinning fatigue, poised and waiting, but no one came for him.

In the stark moments before his mind slipped into dark waters, propped on hard pillows with the single light bulb glaring down on him, he wondered if he was somewhere in Suna. What he remembered of the last few moments of his freedom involved madly clawing through sandstorms twice his height that plucked at him like a living thing, and the dry, cracked skin of his body from weeks wandering the desert opening up and bleeding into his already sweat-soaked clothes - or maybe this was another of Orochimaru's compounds, and Kabuto was somewhere watching him, mocking his crippled state and the loss of precious time used to retrieve him with that sickle-sweet smile, delaying treatment as long as possible just to see him squirm.

What Sasuke did not know was that Kabuto was rotting in an unmarked grave, Orochimaru had washed his hands of him like a blotted out mistake, and he had been brought back to the village he had once left behind.

Home sweet home. 

* * *

He didn't know how long he was asleep (_he was told much later it was four days, and it's sure to be true with what was up to half a dozen ANBU watching him thrash around deliriously in his fever bed at once_), but he figured he dreamt most of the time, more dreams than he had ever had in his life, even more than during those bloodstained weeks just after... _that_ incident.

He won't ever remember most of them, mere flashes of distorted colors (_blood red, red blood_) and faces (_the ones he spared, the ones he killed; they're all the same, all the same_), but there were a number of distinct flashes of imagery. 

Most were about a figure, a faceless figure blurred by tears or rain or both. 

He knew who it was, of course. There have only been so many anchors in Sasuke's life that prevented him from simply floating into the sky and dispersing into a million opposing particles, and he was always the brightest. 

His mother had once told him oneiromancy had the power to predict one's future. He wondered what sort of future concurrent parallels of killing and loving could possibly give him.

On the eighth day of half-conscious confinement, he was well enough to untangle himself from the bed and get to his feet, confused and wary as to why his tenketsu had yet to mend. 

That was when they started administering the drugs. 

* * *

"Sasuke-kun, one day soon you will have your revenge - "

- and _oh_, how many days and days and days had the plying snake told him _that_ old yarn? One day soon for Sasuke turned into one day soon for Orochimaru, one day closer to becoming a mindless skin-sack while that man _thatmanthatman_moved farther away - 

- and then one day soon stopped altogether for both of them once the ambushes started; there was always some glinting Leaf hitai-ate in the line of his sight, he could never strike down enough of them to make them stop trailing over him like grasping ants - 

- and the day he sneaks away to finally hew his brother into a better sort of effigy is the one day he is not using his Sharigan and is soon on his back, grappling with a silver-haired man with pebbles pushing deep into his skin, each hissing equally fervent protests - 

"Sasuke-kun, I can't let you go."

"Can't let me? Can't _let_ me? You speak above yourself, _sensei_."

- and that petal pink girl trying to hold him down with a weak-willed grip that felt like so many petty love notes battering his twelve-year-old patience - 

He was never sure whether those drug-induced flashes, bountiful and sharp like a swarm of angry bees, were the guinea pig results of the Hokage's experimental attempt at truth serum for the mind (_because he had certainly heard whispers of what he had screamed for hours in the room that had been occupied by more than one persons at the time_), or his own unconscious doing. 

But in the end, there was always, always that raucous voice calling his name: 

"Sasuke, Sasuke, come back, come back..."

* * *

_There was also a princess to whom he would eventually marry, and she was like no other. This princess did not revere his riches or call him beautiful or even call him 'prince'; to her, he was a man, and a flawed man at that, one whom she knew she could love deeply given time. Instead of roses, she gave him dandelions, little round heads of yellow that she said could bring all the sun's happiness rather than the pale shade of a rose's love. When he sat pouting in his bedchambers, she would take him horseback riding, and when he was sick she would bring him hearty soup that tasted terrible but worked better than any medicine in the palace._

_She would walk with him in the gardens and whistle lilting tunes, and once she discovered he did not know how to whistle, she took his hand and taught him, with all the calm patience he did not have._

* * *

Sasuke snapped out of the drug-haze as fast as a rock being shot out of a slingshot, sweaty but clear-eyed in the blink of an eye. 

However, he didn't have a chance to orient himself before a heeled foot slammed down on the floor before his bowed head, forcing him to look up into the face of a woman - and even without his Sharigan, there was a jutsu there, he knew. Her own eyes - tiny amber flecks taken from the sun itself - scorched him on the spot. It was less of a wince and more of a pained twitch.

She said nothing more than two sentences that ultimately boiled down to two words.

Extradited. Konoha.

And that, there, was the moment. The _moment_ wherein the universe opened up and his mind jumped from point to point, connecting dots to infinity. 

But even that condensed into a dusty old memory, long removed, of a stupid automatic camera, a hand on his head, the scent of a girl's shampoo, and that damn idiot making faces at him in the periphery of his vision as though Sasuke couldn't see him perfectly well...

Only this wasn't exactly the way he would have returned home if he had had the choice.

Days dragged into days, bled into weeks, drove him a little stir-crazy. Orochimaru's numerous lairs, always dank and filled with the scent of chemicals and wet stone, were preferable to this white, windowless room. Wards covered all surfaces, and a handful more were placed around his body to keep his chakra lowered to the barest minimum. The alien chakra all around him rubbed his instincts raw.

His curse seal was cold and dead, of course. Whether it was quieted for good, he wasn't willing to find out. The aftermath of desert sickness was just beginning to fade, but the other wounds, the ones not visible to the eye... Complete burnout was something every shinobi was taught to avoid. Chakra channels were too fragile to stress. 

He wondered, in an airy sort of way, if he would ever be able to activate chakra again. 

Somehow it didn't seem important, not now. What really seemed to matter, he couldn't put a voice to. Even when a dark-haired woman came to untie his bonds, he didn't say anything. His tongue was too heavy, either with sedatives or uncertainty.

And then the torture started. Or at least the sort of torture only an angered medic nin could accomplish: the art of hands-on healing.

Two hours later, when she had her hand on the door, the question clawed its way up before he could stop it. "Where - ?"

(_The question he had been asking himself ever since that day of Kusunagi finding home in the wrong heart, that day of unrealized vengeance, that day of a little girl, that day, and the day after that, and the one after that where he was so tired..._)

The woman must have heard something in his tone. Something. The pig at her heel made assuaging little snorting noises.

"Hokage-sama will be here shortly," was all she said. 

When she left, he pretended he could hear the long tick tock of the ancient clock that had sat on their mantle place, the one his mother had loved so much. (_Memories were always the cruellest weapon._) He wished the Hokage would hurry. He wished she would let him do something other than blind himself by staring into a light bulb. Kill him. Put him on a leash and let him walk circles in the sunshine. Something. _Anything_. Sasuke knew all too well how easy it was to go crazy living in the world of one's own mind.

* * *

_But this prince did not see his good fortune as treasure at all. He did not want his kingdom or the people in it, and found he couldn't wash their happy, pointless chatter out of his skin no matter how hard he tried. He despised the peaceful humdrum, and found himself constantly wishing for a better place, one where he could gain more power and be more handsome. However much the princess treated him with honesty and fidelity, it did not change the fact that she was a plain and ugly woman, and the prince knew he could never marry her._

_He soon decided that he needed to leave the kingdom. So he tucked a cloak to his body and a satchel to his back and disappeared in the deepest part of evening. In the morning, the people discovered his absence and cried. The princess stalked the lands with the royal guard, cursing his stupidity and selfishness, and tried for many days to find him, but it was no use. He had left no trace of himself behind besides the mark of his absence. Days turned to months, months to years._

* * *

He was the fangless viper, and that was the thought that spun around his head like water in an emptying drain as he stood inches from the door and studiously examined the wards. The ANBU poised outside had their masks turned on him through the wired slit of a window in a distinctly wary fashion; he could tell. Reading nuances in even the most stone cold of expressions was an easy task. Just one of the many lessons taught him by Orochimaru he doubted he would ever forget.

He didn't need to be an expert to tell what the Hokage was thinking when she finally burst through the door; she didn't retract the burst of chakra used to dispel the seals right away, used it instead to herd him backward as she came into the room.

Her anger was certainly impressive, matching Orochimaru like only an old team mate could. He thought he had recognized the name murmured beyond the door. Tsunade. He arranged himself on the bed to hide his reaction.

For a moment, nothing. Then: "Uchiha, you must be eager to die. I can strip more than just that curse seal out of you, and we both know it."

So that was how it was.

"Let me see if I remember... you _did_ graduate from the Academy before you ran off, didn't you?" she continued. Her voice was honey-sweet and enough to slice clean through him. "Then you should well know a missing-nin like yourself doesn't have much in the way of prerogative, no matter who you are. The Sandaime might have been more lenient in your case, but I'm in charge now. Your master killed him, remember?"

Remember.

Living in the past had been his undoing. (_And maybe, maybe his saving grace._)

"It's been two months already," was all he could think to say.

The Hokage stared at him, holding his gaze. Hers was a face he couldn't read. "I know, Uchiha. And you've got a lifetime to go." 

* * *

He was released in January, at the start of a brand new year.

A regulated apartment, chakra-binders, a constant entourage of ANBU, none of it mattered when the first snowflake hit his skin.

Sasuke wavered on the top of the steps, faces peering down on him through the windows at his back.

He didn't know what to do, where to go. 

He went to Ichiraku. 

* * *

Sasuke remembered the exact moment when Itachi was caught, cornered, and killed. He had silently timed it back in his head, down to the last second. He remembered the exact day (_winter, three years ago, November 27th_), the exact time (_early afternoon, the type of furious cold where wind could cut through stone_), and exactly what he had been doing.

Taking a bath.

And like an automaton with no purpose but to move from one mark to another, the moment he found out he was already turning his full, unbroken attention on the one who had beaten him to the kill. Orochimaru had tried to restrain him, but he was already ripping the sealed scroll away from the cooling body of the messenger two miles away before the snake could even muster his forces.

UCHIHA ITACHI KILLED BY UZUMAKI NARUTO AND TEAM. BODY WILL BE DEPORTED ON THE 29TH. 

The machinations of fate were ironic. And like a loop, he was back to radiant blue eyes and half-forgotten boy-threats lying side by side in warm, empty fields. 

* * *

After finding Ichiraku empty, and scanning the streets for faces he didn't know he was looking for, Sasuke shut himself in his new prison and found excuses not to go out. How long he stayed inside, he didn't know, but he was thankful it had come fully stocked with food and other necessities needed for extended periods of time. 

Kakashi was the first to come to him, and took a single step into his apartment, and told him word was getting out about him, and Naruto was away on a mission, and Sakura was doing well, and Iruka had asked about him, and not to worry, two of the ANBU would leave off with him around, and he was glad, really glad that Sasuke was back. And he waited.

Sasuke stared at the other's covered eye, mouth clasped shut, and thought,_Now you are the only one left._

They went out for drinks in the middle of the afternoon, like chummy old friends. The place was out of the way, easy to find only if you weren't looking for it, enough that no one there would recognize his face. He let Kakashi do most of the talking while he stared into his glass, unable to do anything else. (_What do you say to the man whose teachings you took, and tried to kill his other students with? What do you say to the man to whom you repaid that debt with by trying to kill him too? The answer to the riddle is that there's nothing you can say._)

It soon became apparent that silence was not the best course of action; Kakashi's eye grew darker, and he started asking questions, trying to pry even a little something out of him, the stubborn student he could never really reach. Sasuke swallowed, said he was glad Sakura had made Tsunade's apprentice, said his injuries were completely healed, said thank you for paying for the drinks that he hadn't drunk.

Sasuke shifted; the rickety stool squeaked.

Kakashi looked at him, propped his chin up, told him Team 7 had been dismantled two years ago, that Naruto and Sakura were Jounin now and working under themselves, that he had taken on a new cell.

Sasuke looked back at him, listening, hastily absorbing information. 

Kakashi's single eye crinkled at him; Sasuke could tell it was an even-handed smile of seven years. "Would you like to meet them? My team, I mean. We're meeting today, since I wasn't sure you'd be home."

Sasuke found that hard to believe. Everyone within a hundred yards of the grapevine would know where he was, who he was with, and whether or not he had washed his hands after taking a piss. That was how it worked. That was how it was supposed to work. The invitation was the leash, and the conversation with his old sensei the walk, probably just to make sure he didn't go stark raving mad staying cooped up as he was.

But when Sasuke opened his mouth, out popped a, "Yes," so off they went, taking the scenic route down side streets and dark alleys, and Kakashi was most certainly late to meet his team even if he had wanted to be on time.

They met at a training pitch, even in the middle of winter, because the war was still on even with Thunder's surrender, and the Hokage hadn't liked it but she had agreed to have more genins trained, all because the feudal lord was worried about Konoha's withering forces. "And rightfully so," Kakashi said. "Even with Sand at our back, we're having a hard time."

_Thanks to you_, is what Sasuke's mind supplied. _Thanks to you._

What Sasuke really wanted to know was why Kakashi was filling him up with news like a half-full glass. Or maybe that was exactly the point: to fill him up with words and make him real. Reacquaint him, push him back into the rhythm. Like clockwork, a memory surfaced, a lecture from the Academy. That's what Konoha was known for with dealing with its rogues: trying to rehabilitate them.

Rehabilitation. Restoring him to a previous condition, made better, _fixed_. Too bad that he had never really been broken, only changed, molded into a new form, a darker and more brittle one. (_And you couldn't fix that. Could you?_)

Then. The children.

Uchiha Sasuke, top missing-nin in Konoha's bingo book for a near decade, a killer, murderer, turncoat, now inhibited by lack of chakra, was so intent on anything but Kakashi and the introduction he did not want, overlooked the growing shadow on the ground until it was too late.

Something crashed onto his shoulders, a hand fisting into his hair, and he was already going through the inevitable motions before his brain added up the light weight and tiny hand - Kakashi grunted and he was nothing but a silver streak, sweeping the squirming boy off of Sasuke with a hand on the child's leg. 

Fast. Kakashi was faster than he remembered. He relaxed his hooked hand, willing the image of what he had been about to do not to return. He had never killed a child that young. (_But it was a near miss; if Kakashi had been slower, if he had been at full strength..._)

"Wow, Kakashi-sensei, I didn't even see you move! That was _so_ cool!" the boy said, hanging upside down and speaking through the shirt pooled around his face. "Got your friend, though! Didn't I, sensei? I got 'em!"

Sasuke took a step back. The ANBU had seen all of it; the Hokage would find out soon. Maybe they would lock him up in the white-washed room again. 

Kakashi was jostling the boy, shaking him like a pendulum. His was a cool expression, even; he didn't even glance at Sasuke. "Should I send you back to the Academy for such a stupid move? If I add up all the stupid things you've done so far, then the evidence is overwhelming, isn't it, Kenta? What do you two think?" He addressed two girls standing farther back; they were both watching Sasuke. 

"Who's that?" one asked. 

Sasuke cut in before anything could be said. "Lesson eleven of basic shinobi engagement: never ambush a party unless you are prepared to enter into battle. Once you have revealed your position, escape becomes difficult."

Gods above. This was a complete mistake.

"Very good," Kakashi said amiably. He flipped the boy right side up and dropped him. The child caught himself on one foot, then lost his balance and fell. "Did you hear that, Kenta? Sneaking up on a shinobi means you have to fight them, unless you just want to get killed. You can't even reach your kunai pouch from where you're wearing it."

"Ah," the boy moaned. He perked up, pointing straight at Sasuke. "I got 'em, though!"

"Who's that?" the same girl asked again.

He heard it all as if from a great distance, like falling upwards.

" - is Sasuke-kun."

"Sasuke-kun? The one that - "

" - Sakura-nee said he went on a trip -"

Sakura. Trip? He suddenly wanted to laugh, just tilt his head back and laugh until his throat was fucking raw and bleeding. Yes! That was it exactly. He'd gone a trip, just a temporary little vacation to kill his brother, maybe butcher a few dozen Konoha ninja, then he'd be back, sun-soaked and relaxed, with little souvenirs to hand out. 

"I'm going home now, Kakashi." 

(_Home. Ha._)

He took to the trees without wasting another breath, but not quite fast enough to escape the children's voices ("Aw, Kakashi-sensei, you should've made him train with me! _Not fair_!") before the harried sound of boots scraping bark swallowed it up. 

* * *

Time tended to blur urgency, smudge the sharp edge of tension until it was dull and unable to cut.

One week drifted by (_another stroll around the training pitch with Kakashi_), then two (_a reunion with Sakura that started with hysterical sobbing and ended with hysterical sobbing_). He found himself spending a great deal of his time training; a shinobi's birthright when there were no battles to fight or wars to wage. Even if he tried to forget his battles and wars, his body remembered. It still remained tuned to the silent rhythm that Orochimaru had played on him like his own personal instrument of destruction. His feet followed old patterns used in sparring matches against Kabuto, his hands the pattern of martial arts not familiar to this country. 

When he slept, it was light and taught, ready to uncoil from the latest perch into the next bloody fray. 

He wondered if he would ever truly return to how he was. When he asked the same question of his mother (_and back then it had been about Itachi; somehow, someway, he was always a part of everything_) she said only time could tell.

Time was a funny thing. It blunted his misgivings, but the simple thought of Naruto's return from whatever mission he was on always turned him lightning-bright, astir with a fresh sense of unease. Before, death and damnation were insignificant things. Now, the unclear phantom face (_Did his eyes curve inward? Was his nose slightly crooked? Did his cheeks carry dimples?_) of a grinning fool was a kunai to the heart.

* * *

_Now this prince, born into the cradling arms of immunity, was quite taken with the wilds outside, thinking he had finally found his much longed-for freedom. When the moon shone in the sky, outside of the sun's domain, it was pale and round like a silver dollar, and the shadows were lovely and deep._

_He skipped through rivers, wandered through fields, plucked apples from trees, and there was no one to bother him but the animals underfoot. The crows, however, were vicious to outsiders, and they would swoop down from the skies and peck at him with their sharp, sharp beaks, beady black eyes always searching for his vulnerable spots._

* * *

The news that his position on Team 7 had been officially filled by a stranger -

- and what Sasuke did not know was that this accredited substitution occurred six months after his first encounter with a retrieval team, a ruin of demolished rock, with Naruto's face upturned and shell-shocked -

- had caught him off guard. He had assumed temporary replacements would happen; after all, the Jounin Yamato had taken over Kakashi's role as squad leader throughout what Sasuke knew was called his "retrieval process." But... what were the laws again? In Konoha, after teams had been constructed by way of three genins and one Jounin instructor, the only way to officially replace a member or an empty position was to have all team members give their full consent to the proffered candidate. 

And what did it really matter, anyway - Team 7 was long gone, was it not?

Sasuke paced his regulated apartment.

He soon found going outside in the presence of other shinobi preferable to being quietly observed from every angle while he did menial tasks like cracking eggs into a bowl, and so he did, and spent as much time as possible doing so. Nevertheless, no matter how he tried to hide his face, certain people just knew. It was hard to hide in a Hidden Village, and he came to overlook it as he had the same folded hands and whispered words from the days before; the only true difference being the lack of hollow flattery.

When he wasn't engaged with the Hokage (_being poked and prodded and rolled around in her hands like an overripe fruit, as if all the answers to all her questions lay buried just under his skin_) once every two weeks, he'd sit on a fence post, out of sight of any twelve-year-old eyes, and watch Kakashi spar with his new cell, an awkward six-armed offensive force that spent more time tripping into ground squirrel holes than anything else. Sometimes he'd walk with Sakura in the park, or around the grounds of the Academy. One time he even ducked into the Yamanaka Flower shop after seeing Matarashi Anko across the street, and startled Ino so badly she fumbled an expensive looking vase full of orange and yellow flowers. He ended up catching it for her without thinking.

She had stared at him were mouth drawn tight and her eyes abnormally intense, like he had grown a second head. Maybe he had. He didn't know which one of them was more badly spooked - he exited without a word, leaving her to watch him bump into a grocery-bag laden women by accident and take off at a dead bolt.

Sasuke waited, and wondered, and had little more to do than simply _exist_.

He thought he could never be comfortable with that sort of life, but it got easier, _nicer_, like pulling on a skin he had shed long ago, one that still fit him and managed to cover the threadbare spots of the one he had been wearing up until that moment.

Itachi would have mocked him to the ends of the earth if he ever knew. But he was long dead, probably spinning like a mad thing in his grave, and that suited Sasuke just fine. 

* * *

The first time he saw Naruto off a soot-stained battlefield - March, fading cold and pale, sheer clouds - was on a street corner between a bookstore that smelled of old wood and magazine gloss and a run-down laundromat with a Fujikaze movie poster in the front window. It had happened quite by mistake. 

After the sort of training he had (_more like raw experience; how a sword felt slicing through a body, how hard it was to remove intestines from under his fingernails_), it should have been obvious that a hood drawn over his head would only work on civilians, not other shinobi. Not Naruto. But he hadn't considered running into any familiar faces in the quiet little corner of the village he chose to wander, and that sort of assumption was what got him caught between a one-way alley brimming with garbage and a pair of blue eyes, almost periwinkle in their sudden brightness.

* * *

_At length, the prince grew to hate the mean-spirited crows as much as he had hated the people in his faraway kingdom. When he laid down at night, the wild flowers by his nose began to remind him of the perfumed garden outside his window, and the wolves' howling began to remind him of the princess's whistling. He soon started to whistle mournful songs on his happy wandering._

_The wilds lost their brilliance. And the prince soon began to long for home._

* * *

Sometimes there would come a flash when it felt like the back of one's head opened up, cold water being poured onto one's brain, and everything would ultimately boil down to one instant in time: pasts, presents, futures, memories and fantasies and hopes and feelings and blood and tears squeezed into a moment too small to contain it all.

Sasuke had felt that way once before, sitting on a sun-warmed wharf, seeing his parents' spilled blood in every ripple of the water. It was the same now, standing in the park watching the sunset cast creeping shadow-fingers across the lake. Naruto must have been experiencing something similar, because there were no words between them. 

(_Or maybe that wasn't right at all; maybe there were just no words worth giving him, the despicable Judas of Konoha.)_

But all such formalities had to occur eventually, and this reunion, so long in coming, would start with...

Naruto's voice, blithe and faintly impish: "Nice yukata. You look like jailbait, y'know?"

Wait.

"What?"

And then he turned to Sasuke, the dying rays of the sun highlighting his face, accentuating the quicksilver of his eyes and the white flash of a grin. "I said you look like jailbait. Pretty scruffy jailbait, but who's counting, ne?" A thumb jerked in the direction of town. "Let's go drinking."

He had seen Naruto during those six years. Had seen him many times, in fact, although always on the opposite ends of the fight. Sasuke couldn't remember just how many times Naruto had come chasing after him, foiling a good deal of Orochimaru's plans along the way. He should have been used to his face, but Sasuke couldn't remember ever really registering the changes: more lean and angled, the stamp of boyhood slowly leaving his features. 

He swallowed, and a dry and prickly thing he hadn't noticed before clicked in his throat. The maelstrom of flickering shards of _could_ and _should_ and _what_ and _how_ turned to wisps of smoke and died. Just like before, he found himself giving assent without half a thought.

With that, Naruto marched them both straight down Konoha's main street, and the amount of eyes on them was incredible. As they walked, Naruto made it quite clear there was no better place to catch a drink then the one they were going to, and Sasuke winced at the thought of bumping into anyone familiar. (_That night was just for the two of them, just him and Naruto, no one else._)

Thankfully the little open bar was devoid of customers. ("It's mission season," Naruto supplied. He laughed then, as though the war wasn't still on and the people taking missions weren't heading into some part of it. As though the streets weren't barren and the faces tired and rundown.) They took two middle seats, under the constant drone of the guttering neon sign.

For Sasuke, the night became a perpetual state of waiting. Waiting for the question, the confrontation. It never came. Naruto adamantly insisted on picking up the tab, and the conversation slowly began to flow as free as the alcohol, a rusty floodgate that gradually inched open; only Naruto seemed capable of prying his jaws open like some kind of twisted lion tamer. 

They talked about everything except the most important things, just like they hadn't when they were young, and just like they never would. Things left unsaid weren't necessarily unheard.

Still, Sasuke had changed. And for that matter, so had Naruto.

There was a glint of calm steel under Naruto's skin now, an ease with which he carried himself that reminded Sasuke of Kakashi (_Kakashi-sensei. Back when the man awed him_), and he ended up frowning into his sake as he tried to remember when this change had occurred in Naruto and whether he himself had gained that trait. During the night he caught himself fidgeting with the grease-laced napkin in his basket more than once, and grudgingly admitted that he most likely had not.

Finally: "Well, I'd better get going. Can't be too hung over for my mission tomorrow or Neji'll have a fit," Naruto said, pushing back from the bar and rising.

Sasuke slid his gaze from his empty glass to the countertop, and finally to somewhere around Naruto's left shoulder. He recognized the feeling as reluctance. "Yeah. Don't let me keep you."

Naruto stilled a little; his eyes flitted back and forth. His expression didn't appear to change - the jaunty grin that made his whiskered-cheeks stretch in a quaintly childlike way - until Sasuke looked closer and noticed... a quieting, a calmness, like thin ice spreading over a pond. Closed off, almost. Sasuke felt a sudden pang of apprehension - 

Then Naruto cocked his head, saying, "Hey, hey, Sasuke-bastard. Once this war's over, I've been thinking about taking some time off." And it was like the moment never happened. "You and me are gonna hang out." 

"Do I have a choice?" Sasuke couldn't help but drawl. (_Naruto had a way about him, something only Naruto could do._)

"Nope!"

And that's how they parted, with Naruto grumbling about the cost of booze and Sasuke trying to hide a half-smile. 

He didn't care when his entourage of ANBU regrouped with Naruto's disappearance. He didn't care when one gave him a signal to return to his apartment. He didn't even care when he noticed another figure, not an ANBU, sitting cross-legged beside the captain on the rooftop. The figure smiled at him. It felt like a frown.

Sasuke didn't care about anything until he crawled into bed, safe from scrutiny with his head turned into a pillow, and tried to remember exactly _when_ Naruto's face had become more potent than a punch to the gut.

It hadn't been that day with Itachi, although that had been the start, he was sure. No, not then. Sometime later... 

* * *

The legitimate Otogakure had been more... _human_ than Sasuke had expected. He didn't see the official village, or even the country of Sound, until his third year with Orochimaru. They had camped there for eight days after a particularly disastrous waylaying by Sand nins on their way to the latest stronghold forced them to backtrack and cut into Rice Field country.

It was an ugly place, grey and wet, but there was a partially completed pagoda dedicated to Orochimaru - Sasuke found himself snorting at the idea of Orochimaru ever becoming an accepted Kage - located above a small village of people that had yet to become either experiments, or fodder for the plants. Even the most heinous ruler needed at least a handful of citizens to rule, or the fantasy would be brought to light, wouldn't it? But it was shelter.

Nothing about the place was particularly notable to Sasuke, who spent his time walking the cold, damp rokka, watching rain as quick and sharp as kunai hit the garden's flagstones and break into thousands of quicksilver droplets. It was a reprieve from battle at least. (_Ironic how he seamlessly shifted from hungering for a conflict to wishing for more chances to do stupid things like watch rain fall, rather than return to it._)

However, perhaps this was the time and place he had been searching for in his memory, the shift of perception that he couldn't quite trace back.

It was on the sixth day when it happened. He was doing lazy katas in the gallery, humourlessly entertaining Kabuto's reproachful expression, when they both sensed the approaching individual. Sasuke was nonplussed when Kabuto did nothing more than turn his head from his sitting position, and he was even more surprised when five minutes later a child's bobbing head appeared on the single beaten path up to the manor; he stopped his movements to watch her climb the steps and poke her head around a support beam. 

Immediately he noted the dirt stains on her clothes, and the visible skin not covered with cloth. From the village? He knew they did little more than farm, but Orochimaru simply allowed them to come up here when they pleased? 

With a beckoning hand from Kabuto, she came closer, and Sasuke noticed the limp and odd turn of her knee. 

His eyes slid to Kabuto when the other man spoke. "Come have a seat, Aimi. Have you injured your leg?"

"Well, that's pretty obvious, I thought," the girl bit out, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. She could only have been ten or eleven. Kabuto smiled despite the impudence. "Had to walk all the way out here too, once aunty said you'd be here. You mind fixing it? I fell off the roof."

She sat and scooted close enough for Kabuto to touch the swollen mass of her knee.

Sasuke stared. After a moment, Kabuto met his eyes. "Oh, Sasuke-kun. You haven't met Aimi yet, have you? She's from the village - I go down and tend to their injuries when I have the time. However, Aimi seems to get into more trouble than most."

The way her lip jutted out struck something in the back of his mind. He couldn't help but open his mouth. "And Aimi isn't scared at all?" he asked, feigning amazement. Kabuto glance was crisp enough to feel like winter had settled around his shoulders. He ignored it and stepped into the light, bearing down on the little girl. "I mean, knowing what goes on in this country, after all. A clever little girl like you should know better than to wander up here where all the ninja are hiding."

She craned her head up at him. And there was that lip again, and _again_ there was that stirring in his mind, like a chord being struck. Something in her manner, so familiar - 

Her grin was toothy. "Like you're so scary, you big idiot."

Suddenly it was like two faces overlapping; her eyes were too green, her hair too dark, but there it was: Naruto. Naruto with his head cocked back and his nose wrinkled, as though Sasuke had just said something incredibly stupid, igniting that foolish exuberance.

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them: "Like you know anything, _loser_."

The little girl before him opened her mouth, but it was Naruto's voice that said, "Don't call me a loser! Don't act like you know everything. I know you're just an idiot, _idiot_. So there!"

It was Kabuto's abrupt cough that ended the illusion; Sasuke stepped back into the gallery, wondering, _really_ wondering if he was losing it. He must have mumbled some sort of excuse; he stalked down the walkway, vaulted the railing, and disappeared into the rain.

* * *

_He turned around and began to retrace his steps, ignoring the clinging branches of the trees and tugging of the grass as they tried to tie him to his new home. _

_All he could think of was what would be waiting for him upon his return: his lovely kingdom and its good-natured people, his throne and riches... and the princess. The princess who he was going to marry without question. _

_It was all there, waiting. And he had missed it._

* * *

May, warm and heady.

It was easy to forget just who and what he was, until little things reminded him, rocks smashing through glass. Like the day he somehow got strong-armed into having lunch at Ichiraku with Sakura, Kakashi, and Kakashi's new team. He didn't know if the children amused him or disturbed him, with their eerily in-sync movements, imbued with the sense of team work the old Team 7 had never truly had. They (_Kenta, Naomi, Hanako. And somewhere inside him he hoped they'd stay young forever_) had circled him, three bright-eyed hawks, asking him all manner of questions. One said her father told her Sasuke was a great ninja who'd come back to his senses given time. The boy said his father had told him he didn't know anything about a Sasuke. The other girl said her father told her Sasuke had killed a lot of good people. 

("So?" they had asked, pushing closer. "What does that mean?")

It stayed silent on all sides until Sasuke fumbled out some other meaningless witticism: "All shinobi make mistakes and all shinobi kill good people."

The children were the only ones to buy the fallacious bullshit, and the three of them knew it. Sakura made a point of laughing it off a little too loudly.)

Or the day he was finally introduced to his proxy within Team 7, a strange boy he barely recalled - 

-_those dark eyes fixing on him over Naruto's shoulder, pressing close to Naruto's back, protecting Naruto's life as he brought down the Kusanagi sword_ -

- smiling down on him from a rooftop.

Watching him interact with the others was like watching a well-oiled machine; Sakura's fondness, Naruto's laughter, the boyish scuffling. They were... comfortable. _Familiar_.

Sasuke was now the outsider looking in.

But when he was not away from the village, Naruto came for him almost every day, and Sasuke found himself sitting at the table waiting for the sound of the doorbell more often than not. Even if he had all the time in the world to wait (_and what exactly he was waiting for was still just a nebulous thought taking shape in the back of his mind, too hopeful for him to admit to_) while Naruto was an essential talent, making their time together short, it was still something.

It was something. 

* * *

Bars. Bookstores. Grocery stores. Snack bars. Park benches. Movie theatres.

They did it all, traversed every corner twice over. Never Naruto's apartment, nor his, but everywhere else.

His tenketsu healed, the curse seal remained silent and Sasuke watched passing hitai-ates with what could only be described as waxing peace. 

* * *

He always had thought the Uchiha compound was at its most beautiful in the spring time. Even with the front gates boarded over with crisscrossing pieces of wood, he could still see the graceful droop of the _shidarezakura_ and the cascades of pink flowers littered along the dusty cobblestones and the long-abandoned water conduits.

In the sickening jumble of memories of his home (_Konoha's tiny little ghost town_), he remembered his great-uncle, all tanned skin and wrinkles, with crow's feet that looked like frighteningly deep trenches to a five-year-old. Sasuke remembered his great-uncle had never been considered much of a contributor to the clan. A raging fever from his childhood had destroyed all chance of ever using the Sharigan and had left him partly blind in one eye.

His five-year-old self had felt awfully sorry for him, and made his mother bake cookies, just so he had an excuse to run over to the old man's lopsided shack in the back of the compound without being admonished by his father. His great-uncle had laughed at the sight of the cookies (at his age, he only had a couple of teeth left) and had scooped Sasuke up to dandle him on one knee.

The breeze sent a cluster of petals skittering along the ground, and the old man had caught Sasuke watching them. He pointed to the row of trees alongside his house and said, "You like those, do you? Those are my doing, you know."

"What are you talking about? The trees have been here forever," Sasuke had replied.

The man laughed. "Your forever is a little shorter than mine. Had nothing better to do so I planted them around the town a long time ago. They're like my children, all grown up, and they'll be here long after your children too."

Sasuke hadn't really gotten it, because he knew his great-uncle didn't have a wife and definitely no kids. "Why are they pink?" he asked instead. "Pink's a stupid color. They should be red or white like that fan picture that's all over the place."

That had made his great-uncle laugh even harder than the cookies had; the shaking nearly dislodged Sasuke from his seat.

"Well, the Hyuuga clan had already nabbed the _Somei Yoshino _before I could get to it, so we got stuck with the pink ones." He laughed again. 

The memory almost made Sasuke smile. He stood at the barricade, just letting his eyes roam. Then, almost as though he were in tune to it, he heard the unconscious shifting of an ANBU's foot against concrete.

Sasuke kept moving. 

* * *

The day Naruto was scheduled to leave on another A-ranker, there was an unexpected knock on Sasuke's door, and there stood Naruto in battle attire, rocked back on his heels, the sunrise bleeding over his hair and face. 

_How_, Sasuke thought, a not unpleasant thrill working its way down his spine, _did this happen? How did _this_happen?_

Naruto took him out for ice cream at six o'clock in the morning, on his way to the west gate where he would be leaving. The streets were even more empty than usual, devoid of squealing children and the bustle of the market, just early-morning vendors, stilted and bleary-eyed, slowly unfurling their wares. The smoke in the air was particularly bad that day, strong enough to taste. And under that, more repugnant, humid scents, a barely tangible layer only shinobi could recognize: burning wood on top of burning clothes on top of burning bodies.

Sasuke couldn't bring himself to lick the small vanilla thing Naruto gave him - when was the last time he'd had ice cream, anyway? - and instead let it melt into the wrapper. Naruto smiled, chattered with the seller, finally settled for a mix of three flavours on the largest cone available. The woman smiled back, replied kindly, acted like she didn't know exactly what sort of game they were playing.

Naruto was just getting a scoop of strawberry when he stilled, tipped his head slightly, and glanced back over Sasuke's shoulder with a quirk of his lips. 

He turned back to the woman and ordered a sherbet just as Sasuke found himself staring at the back of a dark head of hair.

"Naru-chan, you shouldn't eat that. You'll be constipated for your mission."

Sai. The name officially granted him after his resignation from Roots. The shinobi made a permanent member of Team Kakashi for two years before its dismantling. 

The colorless, smug bastard who had managed to replace him in all ways and more. 

Naruto's snort drowned out the sound of Sasuke's wafer cracking under his fist. "Eat your sherbet and shut your mouth, asshole." There was no venom, only that not-quite handsome face grinning in such a way as could dazzle the sun.

"How dare you. I came all this way to get you since you were late, and you insult me. Naru-chan, you're too cruel," said Sai, as blank as piece of wood. 

"_Fine_, let's get going then. And quit calling me that!" 

Sai fell into step between them (a glance, a nod, an absent, "Sasuke-kun,"), and Sasuke found himself shaking the remnants of his uneaten ice cream off his hand while the other two bickered between mouthfuls. 

He saw them off at the gate, the other two unfamiliar men giving him wide berths. Naruto waved. Sai gave a hollow smile. The gates closed around a muted, "Naru-chan, you have ice cream on your cheek."

He stood there for a long, long time, just staring up at the tall palisade, the guard station, his constantly shifting shadow of ANBU, tracing every possible chink in his cage. Could he? Could he do it?

On the way home, he tried to tell himself it was in every shinobi's nature to want to test their limits after the sort of injuries he had recovered from. It didn't help to suppress the echoing memory of Orochimaru's laughter.

* * *

_But when he walked back through the gates of his kingdom, it was into a different world than the one he had left. _

_The people stared at his bare feet, his worn and muddied clothes, the brambles in his hair. They smiled cordially, gestured him onward with helpful hands, but it was all a stranger's kindness. They no longer remembered him. The prince, now unsettled, rushed to the palace only to find the guards would not allow him in. He fought, pleaded, and bargained, desperate to find his father. Still, they would not let him in._

_So he rushed around the courtyard, into the gardens where a peach tree stood outside his bedroom window. _

_And who should he find sitting under that tree, whistling? No one else but the princess of course._

_He sighed in relief, approaching her. "I am back now, princess," he said. "You remember me, don't you? I am back."_

_She squinted against the sun, holding her hair back, and said after a long moment, "You are dirtier than I remember you." He could have laughed, could have embraced her right there, but she stood and gathered her skirts around her. "Just a moment, I will fetch His Highness for you."_

_The prince nodded, eager, but the person who followed the princess back into the garden was not his father at all, but his cousin. He froze, horrified. On his cousin's brow, there sat a crown. In his cousin's hand, there was a bouquet of fresh roses. And most terrible of all, there on his cousin's lapel was a little head of yellow, a dandelion._

_"What... is this?"_

* * *

The raging river of the war slowed to a trickle, and then, finally, stopped entirely.

(_Reports swore Orochimaru was dead, although they never found a body. Who knows?_)

Naruto returned earlier than expected; a puncture to the lung that had him sent home ahead of the others. Sasuke was passing by the hospital the day Naruto was released (_a coincidence, of course_) and was (_pleasantly_) surprised to hear he had taken the entire summer off from any key missions.

Sasuke tried at nonchalance, leaning against the building with his head tipped back to the sky. "It's going to be a long summer," he said offhandedly. 

He didn't miss the same quiet (_dead silent_) expression cross Naruto's face, as quick as a passing cloud. And just the same, it was gone like it had never been, and Naruto shrugged on his flak jacket, grinning, and said, "Yep!" 

Sasuke searched for that glint of matured steel, tried to catch a glance of it in Naruto's mien again, but eyes without the Sharingan just didn't seem to be as effective.

He tried to ignore it, and it was all too easy with Naruto's overwhelming enthusiasm "for a summer to remember!"

And so it went. 

* * *

The season was as Konoha-perfect as it could have ever possibly been. 

The Hokage allowed Sasuke's lead to loosen to the neighbouring towns; Sakura's tear-laden and smile-bright parting sent them through the gates. 

Naruto's hair was a wild, glorious crown of sunlit gold as he tramped through fields alit with cicada songs. Sasuke watched him move with all the grace he hadn't seen Naruto acquire and tried to toss his regrets away with his handful of pebbles into the cheerfully burbling streams.

Drinking until dawn in a roadside inn. Learning to play pool in the smoky pub of a farming village. Falling asleep to the sound of Naruto's snoring.

Summer bled into fall, and still they stayed.

By the end of October, it seemed Sasuke could map out everything Naruto did in those hundred odd days, they were together for so much of it. They took up battles stances opposite each other (_not to mortally wound each other, not like they had been doing for so very long_) in a dusty little clearing, just doing simple hand-to-hand sparring for hours, partly because Sasuke couldn't do much else, but mostly because there no desire to do more than try to trip up feet and throw playful sucker punches.

Sasuke soaked up the leisure, the sun, and especially Naruto. 

Of course, dreamy days never last as long as one would like. It was an overcast day, spent inside their hotel room, Naruto continually tossing a pillow at his head and Sasuke returning fire with half-hearted insults, when the messenger landed on the windowsill and tapped at the glass, urgent.

The message was unrolled, the messenger sent off with a nod, and Naruto's face went completely white.

Within seconds they were flying back towards Konoha at a pace that would have fouled even Orochimaru. Sasuke soon found he couldn't keep up either, and ended up tracing Naruto's indiscreet trail back to the double doors of the hospital entrance.

* * *

_He had come home, but what he regained were nothing but words._

_"Disasters spawn more disasters, thus the physics of dominos. You were gone too long and we needed a ruler too much."_

* * *

He burst into the second hall lounge, upsetting a nurse's armload of files, in the middle of Naruto's thundering outburst:

" - what's going on I saw some medic nin take him away and I haven't heard anything yet and these damn nurses won't tell me anything is he all right - "

Hands held up as though trying to placate a rabid animal, Sakura finally raised her voice to shout, "_Naruto_!" The whip crack of her voice silenced him to the point his mouth still hung half open in speech. Sasuke watched her through the curtain of falling papers, panting. Her face softened at something she saw; she touched Naruto's sleeve. "Naruto, he just went into surgery - Shizune is the head surgeon, and you know she's one of the best medic nin in Konoha. He's going to be _fine_, I know it. I'm going to go in there right now, okay? See? Sasuke's here. Just wait a moment."

She left. Sasuke came up to Naruto's side, wondering who and what and why Naruto was so upset. (_And when Naruto was upset, it was like someone flipped the switch and made the world dimmer, washed out in pale water colors._)

Naruto's hand suddenly grabbed his wrist and clung; his grip was clammy and his fingers trembled slightly. Sasuke's heart did an odd double beat - 

- "Sasuke, Sai's hurt. Bad, I think. Shit, this can't happen, this can't fucking happen!" Fingers tightened to the point of pain. His tone, it was so - 

- and then it felt like it had stopped altogether. 

* * *

Naruto sat full on the bed, leaning into the colorless boy's face with his equally colorless hospital gown and was berating him loudly, and there was something odd about the perpendicular cross their piled legs made, knees lightly bent under knees, and the comfortable way they both went through the motions as if they had done it all before, the soft smile on one mouth and the second one threatening to break out over the wobbly line that was supposed to be disapproving, and suddenly it was so unmistakable - 

-_so terribly fucking obvious_ - 

- and if never before that moment, Sasuke thought he must be an utter fool. 

* * *

("Who, Naruto and Sai?" Sakura asked, on the day they have lunch together.

There were no tears, only a stiffness in the air, beginning with the tapping of her toe against her chair, and ending with Sasuke resisting the urge to scowl. He could tell she was unsure whether to push or pull, bring him into her life or not, and he couldn't prevent a flash of impatience. 

He was almost proud of her newfound caution, but he had to _know_.

"They've been dating for a while now, although," she added with a little laugh, "Naruto refuses to call it 'dating'. It's been almost... " She trailed off for a moment, biting at the corner of her lip. The fact that she had to think about it drove Sasuke a little mad. "Four years, I think.") 

* * *

It was a blustery December evening when Sasuke picked his way across Konoha to Naruto's apartment for the first time.

Post-war arrangements had gone sour after the ambush that had incapacitated (_that bastard_) Sai and his team, and available shinobi had never been so scarce throughout the cool-down period.

He had spent that time resentful and alone. It had never been a good combination for him.

If the Hokage ever noticed he was working around the restraints and training himself to use chakra again, she said nothing during their meetings. If she ever noticed he could use his Sharingan, if she ever noticed the burns on his hands from attempting Chidori, if she ever noticed the way he rubbed at the curse seal, she said nothing. 

And now. 

Sasuke was drunk, had capsized all the growing buds of opportunity around him, and hadn't seen Naruto in such a long time.

So it was no surprise what happened when Naruto answered the door, wearing nothing but a pair of faded green boxers with grinning frog faces; Sasuke saw, through the alcohol blurring the edges of his vision, the soft hair circling Naruto's navel and disappearing beneath the band of his boxers.

He surged forward, crushing his mouth to Naruto's - only Naruto was quicker than he expected, and turned his head enough to catch Sasuke's lips on the corner of his mouth. Suddenly there was Naruto's hand on his arm, bracing him at a distance. "Sasuke - "

"Naruto," Sasuke murmured. All his thoughtful words and probing questions seemed to have fallen out of his mind and he was left with nothing. Words began spilling from his lips and it was beyond him whether they made any sense or were little more than drunken babble. God, he was pathetic. "Naruto... You said you'd help me once. Didn't you, Naruto? You wanted to know why I left, why I did what I did - do you still want to know, Naruto? Do you still want to know?"

_(Do you still want to know what's inside me? Do you still want to find a way in? Do you? Do you?)_

Caught against the doorframe, Naruto stared at him in obvious shock. "Sasuke." Hearing his name spoken so softly sparked something in him. He thought of the potential outcome of one day having Naruto rush to his bedside, white-faced and worried sick, and wondered how long it would take to flip the world back to how it was. How it _should_ be. "Sasuke, I..." 

Naruto's gaze shifted, and that's when Sasuke noticed the second figure.

Sai sat on the couch in equal undress, smiling placidly at them over the top of a book. "Good evening, Sasuke-kun," he said. 

There the three of them were, poised at the interlude of some ridiculous dance. 

Then Sai tapped the cover of the book with one finger and said, "Kakashi-san lent this to me a while ago; it's a very old book in Konoha's history, a fable you might say. I was reading this to Naruto just now. My favorite quote is: 'A disaster spawns more disasters, thus the physics of dominos.'" He smiled again. "I think it suits you, Sasuke-kun, don't you?"

He couldn't remember what he said, but it came out a growl (_and yes, he could feel the malice working up through his body, just like the good old days_), and then there was Naruto shoving him away, slamming him against the cold balcony by the collar of his shirt. "What the hell are you doing, Sasuke!? You _know_ you're not allowed out after dark. Go the fuck home!"

He couldn't cover the wince that crossed his face as his back was crushed against unyielding metal. When he kicked Naruto clear across the balcony, it was pure instinct. When he met an oncoming ANBU with a blow that shattered the mask and the nose underneath, it was with pure pleasure. 

It was with that thought in mind that he slumped limply, and let himself be pushed down and bound in front of suddenly butter yellow windows, residents poking their heads out of doors and windows, all murmuring in one collective voice.

Naruto sat up slowly with Sai's hands on his shoulders, holding his stomach. His cheeks were wet. He was crying.

"Damn it, Sasuke, damn it! It was only for a fucking year! Just one! You almost made it - damn it, why did you - " He broke off and turned his head away, cursing.

An alarm pierced his consciousness, striking him clear in his gut. He wouldn't, _couldn't_, ignore that. 

"What?"

* * *

_"I want the sun and the moon and everything in between," said the prince. "Give it back to me!"_

_His cousin looked down at him and said gently, "Dear prince, there is nothing left to give you. You turned your back on the sun once. You turned your back on the moon once. Neither will take you in again. All you have left are the stars, and each one holds a regret of what you have lost."_

_The prince gaped in horror._

_"But you are still a part of this kingdom. However small, as long as you are here there will always be a home for you, and you may walk with the queen whenever you wish," his cousin continued._

* * *

Funny how things work out.

The deserts of Wind country were as hot and unforgivable in January as in summer, even with the Kazekage's sand manipulation keeping the worst of the elements off their party, even with the sealed cover of the caravan drawn over his body. Chains rattled with every movement of his body, and Sasuke couldn't help but laugh at the irony of it all.

One year, Naruto had said. 

He had been told the technicalities after - after he was prepared for the journey to Suna, nestled in the center of a shinobi escort led by the Hokage, the other half fronted by the Kazekage not due to meet up with them until halfway through. 

One year. One year of being a good boy would have rewarded him with a lesser trial on the first of January, the day of his initial release. One year of being a good boy would have prevented him from being dragged in front of his own personal war tribunal in Sunagakure, tried by a representative panel on the basis of those he had victimized, sentenced to life in a holding cell, or death.

The answer to _that_ dilemma was rather obvious, of course. Because there was something special about him. He was the single heir to the reputable Uchiha clan, the golden boy genius of Konoha. And there were no quick and easy solutions for people like that, no quiet passing, no hint of modesty in the way they built him up nor likewise in the way they would tear him down.

Sasuke remembered Sakura had cried; she had cried, looking him straight in the eyes, not breaking contact until Kakashi had touched her shoulder. Sai had smiled. Naruto had cried too, just a little. He hadn't been able to look at him.

Sasuke laughed again.

Disasters spawn more disasters, indeed. 

* * *

Next to the Kazekage, Tsunade is discussing the more vexing _what ifs_ involved in Uchiha's trial when the first explosion rocks through the caravan, knocking her flat.

She gasps at the taste of power. Already, she knows. She knows, she knows, she knows.

(_No. We're too close. This can't happen again._)

As fast as the two Kages can whip around, Uchiha is a blur of white and red, white of the clothes around his dancer's body as he moves, dips, strikes with his suddenly bared fangs, and red the color of the Sharingan, of the blood spraying into open air. 

He truly is their one and only; even without the curse seal, he defends against raging sand and continues to sever his way through the fifteen-man ring without giving an inch. One year, five years, ten - Tsunade doubts any amount of time could ever really dull the weapon he has become.

And she knows, _fucking god_, she knows. 

(_No. No. No. Uchiha, you're just a goddamn monster._)

She can't get there fast enough; Hyuuga Hiashi is thrown directly into her path, and the last two corpses are flung into the walls of sand closing around them. 

And - 

- He looks just like a swallow with wings spread as he flies away.

"You're not getting away this time!" she screams. "You won't escape alive!"

She fancies he looks back. Just once.

* * *

_But no matter how they tried to placate him, the prince would not heed their words, and after only a day he walked through the gates once more. Only this time he did not return to the kingdom he had abandoned, nor the wilderness he had turned away from, and was never again seen by those who had loved him. The only thing left behind by this prince are the sad songs he would whistle, taught him by the fair princess he could no longer have, and that is why at the end of this story, parents will tell their children to prick their ears and listen closely._

_Because if ever they are to hear the wind whistling at their door, scrabbling heavy-hearted fingers at their windows, it is the prince. The once-great prince always looking for the path back to his forgotten heart._


End file.
